Blackie Sullivan

Blackie Sullivan was always running. Anytime anyone saw the young Cayuse man with the tan skin and the shock of black hair, he was mid-stride. His arms and legs pumped in perfect timing with each other. They were like a locomotive had come to life as a young man. The pistons he was graced with could put a steam engine to shame for their timing and precision. He wasn’t running for the joy of it -- though he did enjoy it immensely. He was running because the summer in Washington State could quickly climb above eighty degrees and ice melted pretty quickly in the eighty degree heat.

Blackie worked for the SP&S railroad, loading and unloading the ice. He was responsible for packing the produce cars, which was usually considered the hardest job in the business. The blocks of ice could weigh over a hundred pounds. On some days, Blackie was pretty sure the blocks weighed more than he did. As they were sweating into his back, chilling his spine to the bone, he imagined he could actually feel them getting lighter. The work curved his back and rubbed his shoulders raw. At the end of every day, his knees were swollen and angry, thrumming with the beat of his heart. His lungs burned, and his hips screamed. The work was the kind of thing the people of Washington expected of Native Americans. Not content with just the conquest and plunder of his ancestral home, the white folks who had moved into Cayuse land demanded that Natives do the work they didn’t want to do.

Walla Walla was a ramshackle frontier town that depended on him to keep it refrigerated. Without him, the lettuce would wilt and turn to mush, the meat would spoil and turn rancid. The white folks of Walla Walla might have thought he was a second-class citizen, but they depended on him to keep them fed. He took pride in that.

So, Blackie devoted himself to doing his job as best he could. He hoisted the blocks of ice up onto his back, tightened down the leather straps that held it to his back, and set off every morning. Each morning started with the slowest delivery of the day. He had to get his legs stretched out and his limbs warmed up. By the heat of the day, when the sun was literally melting away the profits, he was in his finest form. That’s when the farmers, merchants, and railroad workers would meet at a tavern called the Look-See for an afternoon beer before heading back out to their respective jobs. The bar was a clapboard thing thrown together from the wood of the original wagons and train cars that had brought white conquerors into what came to be known as Washington Territory. The mismatched wood was slathered with globby white paint to keep it from decaying in the windswept town. The gaping holes and splinters did nothing to keep the heat out of the bar, though. The patrons were frequently stomping through ankle-deep dust as they swilled steam beer. Unlike the crisp, clear beer of the well-coiffed and feminized east coasters, the bearded and callused men of Washington drank steam beer from heavy metal steins.

Roger laughed, “Larson would wipe the floor with that savage. He’s the fastest man alive.”

Buddy pursed his lips as if he’d smelled something bad. “He ain’t faster than Blackie,” the farmer responded.

Buddy pointed out at Blackie, struggling in the summer heat. Blackie wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and kept running. “Look at that, man. Savages just ain’t built right for being athletes. That’s why there ain’t no good Indian athletes at the ‘lympics.”

The bartender shouted across the bar to Buddy, “You really think an Indian could beat a white man?”